“Maybe you’re right. Maybe once we got to know each other things would be fine. But I can’t predict that.”
Frost noted that Robbins, in a very biblical way, had now denied Gruen thrice. He was furious, but kept his temper under control, even though it was time, he thought, to confront Robbins with his basic lie.
“Casper, let me ask you a very frank question, to which I would like an equally frank answer,” Frost said, leaning forward on the sofa to face AFC’s President straight on. “Are you sure you never discussed your future at AFC with Jeffrey Gruen?”
Robbins’s body visibly jerked back, as if he had been hit in the face. But he recovered at once, a slight flush the only lingering evidence that Frost’s question had disturbed him.
“Reuben, as my young son would say, what are you smoking? I’ve never heard such an absurd question in my life.”
“Absurd it may be, but would you be good enough to answer it?”
“I told you, the only time I met the man was at that meeting a week ago Monday. You were there, you know what was discussed.”
“What did he offer you—even more than two million a year? Blue Shield as well as Blue Cross?”
“You’re not making any sense. And since I’m late for the country, I’m leaving now. Right now.”
“Why do you persist in lying to me, Casper?” Frost asked, as Robbins got up to leave. “I know that you met Jeffrey Gruen before last week.”
“I suppose I may have been introduced to him somewhere, but I can’t say as I remember it.”
“Your memory’s like that of President Reagan,” Frost said. “What about last winter in Gstaad?”
Robbins stopped at the door and turned around. He looked straight at Frost, but did not speak for a moment. “Yes, I probably did meet him there,” he finally said, in a quiet but markedly angry voice. “I met Bill Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith there, too. I met a lot of people there. So what? And how did you find out about it anyway?”
“Casper, I may be old, I may be over the hill, I may be out of it in the eyes of many. But I have a large network of friends who get around, and who tell me things. Such as the juicy little nugget that you and Jeffrey Gruen seemed inseparable in Gstaad last winter. The first week in March, I believe.” Frost had deliberately used his informant’s word—“inseparable”—and added the specific reference to early March.
“I guess you do get around,” Robbins said, still speaking quietly. “Yes, I did meet Jeffrey Gruen at Gstaad. A mutual friend was there and introduced us. Gruen pursued me the whole time—he was already interested in AFC—wanting to know everything I would tell him about it. It was some vacation, being hounded day and night about the Company I was trying to get a rest from.”
“To go back to my question,” Frost said, “did he discuss your future at AFC?”
“Not really. He told me that if he ever made an offer, he hoped I’d be on his side. And that he would make it worth my while for any help I could give him.”
“Did you tell Flemming about this?”
“No, no, it was far too ‘iffy.’”
“When it became less ‘iffy,’ two weeks ago, did you tell him then?”
“I didn’t see any reason to. There was nothing I could do for Gruen anyway.”
Except murder the strongest opponents of the offer, Frost thought. But he was not about to pursue that possibility.
“Let’s just say you were going to play it safe,” Frost said. “If the offer didn’t go through, you’d carry on without anyone being the wiser. And if it did, you could cash in your parachute, or stay on if Gruen made you a better deal. Very clever, if I do say so.”
“That’s a harsh way of putting it, but, yes, I was pretty well protected.”
“The nineteen-eighties version of corporate loyalty,” Frost said scornfully.
“Now look here, don’t start lecturing me about that,” Robbins shot back, all traces of his charming façade gone. “You remember when I came to AFC, from HAG Communications? I’d been done out of the top job there after twenty years of day-and-night, round-the-clock loyalty. Which got me approximately nothing. I had learned my lesson by the time I came to AFC. From then on, I was going to look after me, myself and I. Period. Full stop. I did and I have and right now I’m going to the country.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” Frost said.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” the AFC President replied ambiguously as he got up and left, neither pausing to shake hands nor to say good-bye.
A SURPRISE
21
Leaving AFC’s offices at 272 Park Avenue, Frost hailed a cab heading uptown.
“Two-seven-two Park Avenue, driver,” he said, as he settled into the narrow backseat.
“Huh? You kidding, mister? That’s two-seven-two right there,” the driver said, pointing toward the skyscraper Frost had just left.
“My mistake, sorry,” Frost mumbled, giving his home address on Seventieth Street.
“Jeeze, for a minute there I didn’t think you was all put together,” the driver said helpfully.
Frost grunted, but he had not thought much of his own performance. Was this another sign, more dramatic than most, that he was aging and, God forbid, perhaps getting senile? He chose not to believe so, attributing his lapse to his distasteful meeting with Casper Robbins. He leaned back in the seat, closed his eyes and tried not to think either of Robbins or his own mental acuity as the driver crept very slowly northward in the late-afternoon traffic.
At the end of the arduous trip uptown, he found Cynthia at home.
“You’re early,” he said.
“I know. But it’s an Indian summer Friday afternoon, so everyone was leaving early. I decided to do the same.”
“I’m not surprised,” Reuben said. “I practically had to tie Casper Robbins up with a rope to keep him in his office.”
“How did it go?”
“Depends how you look at it. He’s an appalling, greedy, sneaky man. But I got him to admit that he knew Gruen and, for all practical purposes, that he’d been scheming to run AFC for Gruen.”
“Didn’t you tell me once that he had a very sweet arrangement with AFC?”
“Yes, I’m sure I did. He was protected three ways to Sunday if the Company ever got taken over.”
“But that wasn’t good enough for him?”
“No, it seems not.”
“But wasn’t it something like two million dollars a year he was supposed to get?”
“Yes it was.”
“Is anyone worth that amount?” Cynthia asked incredulously.
“Of course not,” her husband replied. “But consider the very sensitive situation he was in, with twenty-five-year-olds on Wall Street making more than a million. It just wouldn’t have been right to give Casper less than double that if he were kicked out.”
“You are kidding, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Reuben answered. “I was dead set against it, but Flemming thought it was worthwhile to insure Robbins’s loyalty. Even if the payments were two million.”
“That’s an awful lot of cans of SUPERBOWL,” Cynthia observed.
“One can only hope that Gruen’s tender offer fails. If it does, I think the Board will rip Casper Robbins’s parachute to shreds when they find out about his double-dealing. Fortunately I managed to get some rather explicit fine print into his contract to the effect that he doesn’t get paid off if he’s fired for misconduct.”
“How about getting arrested for his misconduct?” Cynthia asked. “Do you think there’s any chance he committed the murders?”
“I’m now convinced that’s a real possibility. Robbins has shown he was unscrupulous and devious. How big is the distance from his lies and his double-dealing to murder? Maybe a long way, but then again maybe not so far. I’ve asked Luis and that fellow up in Greenwich to check pretty closely on his movements at the time of the murders.
“But I’m discouraged,” Reuben went on. “The more time goes by, t
he longer the list of suspects. It’s supposed to work the other way around.”
“What about Laurance, by the way? I haven’t heard much about him.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, look at the business about Diana’s bitter manuscript. Or the tough conversation you had with her mother. Or my run-in with Diana’s friend from Concerned Women. Every conversation seems to create more suspicion. But never about Laurance.”
“They’ve checked him out pretty thoroughly. He said he was in California when his father was murdered, and they confirmed that he was staying at the St. Martin Hotel in Los Angeles. I haven’t heard yet about Thursday, at the time of Sorella’s death, but he certainly seems in the clear on the first one.”
“I was just curious. But cheer up, dear. Something is bound to break loose,” Cynthia said.
“I’m sorry I seem down,” her husband responded. “It’s the stalemate over the murders, of course, but also the unprincipled greed of Casper Robbins.”
“He does seem a charmer,” Cynthia said.
“You know, I’ve been involved with businessmen for, what, fifty years? I’ve seen dedicated and smart ones and I’ve seen oafs. And I’ve seen many who were more interested in feathering their nests than doing a good job. But the kind of outright greed you see today is appalling. Money is the only measure of success with too many of them—and far too many of the young ones, especially. I’m glad I’m retired.”
“I think what you need is a martini—and a break in the case,” Cynthia said. As usual, she was right.
The weekend was quiet—too quiet for Frost’s taste. There was no news from the police, which annoyed him. He was exasperated further when he found that his friend Bautista and Francisca Ribiero had left town for three days—exasperated because it meant Bautista was not working on the Andersen case and also because he and Cynthia could not ask them to dinner.
His enforced tranquillity was broken only once, by a telephone call from an irate Billy O’Neal. The police had visited for a second time, pressing him about his whereabouts at the two murder times.
“They act as if they don’t believe me,” O’Neal fairly shouted on the phone. “I was at the New York Athletic Club both afternoons. They say there’s no record of me having been there.”
“Is that true?”
“There probably isn’t any record,” O’Neal said. “All I did was sit in the library and read magazines.”
Frost tried to calm O’Neal down. But he couldn’t help thinking that his caller’s story was inherently improbable. Not a single drink chit with O’Neal’s name on it for the afternoons in question? If he’d really been at the NYAC, that seemed most unlikely.
“Can’t you call them off, Reuben? I don’t like my veracity challenged,” O’Neal said. “They all but called me a liar—me, a director of the Police Athletic League, a trustee of the University of—”
Frost cut him off before he could recite additional character references. “Billy, I’m sure the police are only doing their job. And I’m afraid two visits, however uncomfortable they may be for you, don’t constitute harassment.”
“Thanks a lot, counselor,” O’Neal said, hanging up.
On Monday, Frost made what had become a habitual weekly visit to the Chase & Ward offices at One Metropolitan Plaza. Despite his very real efforts to cut the ties that bound him to the firm where he had spent his active life practicing, there were still things that could be accomplished more conveniently at the firm’s offices than anywhere else. Cashing checks for ready cash, for instance, or obtaining a supply of postage stamps. (Frost was not, and never had been, a cheapskate. When he had been an active partner, the firm had always supplied postage stamps for his personal mail. When he retired, he quite honorably felt that he should, like the ordinary citizen, buy his postage stamps at the local branch post office. But two trips to that grim edifice, standing on line interminably and being waited on by truly surly clerks—compounded the first time by his genuine ignorance of how much postage was required for an ordinary letter—led him back to the firm as a source of supply. It turned out that George Bannard, the firm’s Executive Partner, had not countermanded Frost’s right to free postage stamps. So this minor beneficence went on, to Frost’s great convenience.)
And then there was the question of Frost’s mail. It was all supposed to be forwarded to Seventieth Street, but very often it was not. So there was invariably a Saks Fifth Avenue catalogue of women’s styles for the coming season—why couldn’t these computerized stores differentiate among their customers by sex?—and a stack of unforwarded bills that, if left unpaid, would lead to exorbitant finance charges, or worse. (Letters that said “But Mr. Bloomingdale, I’m old and retired and neither the post office nor my former law firm will forward your bills” had no effect on the inexorable computers that calculated eighteen percent finance charges on the most modest purchases of an old, and generally credit-reliable, man.)
He also wanted to talk with either Ernest Crowder or Marvin Yates. Gruen’s second one-week deadline was up on Wednesday; he wanted to find out what was going on and what was planned.
At the office, Frost picked up the pile of letters in the mail room addressed to him and quickly discarded the third-class advertisements and third-rate appeals for funds. He then sought out Yates, who greeted him in a friendly enough fashion, though also conveying the impression that his time was limited.
“What do you think, Marvin?” he asked, once seated in his former partner’s office. “Is Gruen going to make his offer?”
“I’m sure of it. With both Sorella and Flemming out of the way, Randolph Hedley gets to name the other two Foundation directors. You’ve heard him talk. He’s made up his mind to sell, I’m sure. Knowing him, he’ll name Sally as a director, but he’ll also pick someone else for the other spot who’ll follow his lead. If he decides to sell, Sally could fight him in court, of course, but that might well lead to the Foundation being liquidated.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Frost asked.
“Do for who, Reuben? The daughter wants to sell out and give the proceeds to indigenous quilt-makers. The other kid, Laurance, probably wants to sell, too, and raise his ante with those venture-capital boys he plays with in California. And I don’t see that writer who was married to Sorella staying around as a long-term investor. The only one who may want to keep her stock is Mom, and she doesn’t own enough to matter. Mom and the booze-head cousin. Christ knows what he plans to do. Probably depends on the time of day and what shape he’s in when asked.”
“So there’s no way of resisting Gruen, is that what you’re telling me?” Frost asked.
“There is, but there’s a real question whether it’s worth it,” Yates explained. “The Company could hock every damn asset it owns, right down to the last can of SUPERBOWL in its inventory, and borrow to buy back enough stock to prevent Gruen from getting control.
“When Flemming Andersen was talking about a buy-back, he assumed all the family stock would stay in place,” Yates continued. “The buyback he had in mind would have cost up to $440 million, you remember. With others bailing out, the ante could go up to well over a billion. I talked with Fred Stacey over at Hughes and he thinks that’s too much debt for AFC to carry. It’s not Brazil, after all.”
“Sounds pretty grim to me,” Frost said. “Is there anything else that can be done?”
“Stacey and his group are looking for a White Knight, but nothing’s developed so far. Besides, if we’re right that Gruen needs a win, he’ll probably outbid anybody who appears.”
“That’s good for the shareholders, but it doesn’t save the Company,” Frost observed.
“Right. And every time the bidding goes up, a buyback gets less likely.”
“You’ll let me know when you hear something?” Frost said.
“Sure. You going to be in the office?”
“No, but you can always reach me at home or at the Gotham.”
Looking out the
window when he returned to his office, Frost saw that the drizzle from earlier in the day had become much nastier. He decided to call a radio taxi for the trip home.
As usual in bad weather, he had to wait for the taxi to arrive at One Metro Plaza. But the car came eventually and began the trip back uptown. While riding north, Frost was half listening to the dispatcher’s call for cabs, when one announcement piqued his curiosity, a call to pick up a person whose name he recognized at the Union League Club, going to 324 Park Avenue.
In the next few minutes, the dispatcher repeated the call several times, so there was no question about the message. He used only the last name of the customer, but that was enough to get Frost’s attention. And why was there a familiar ring to the other address, 324 Park Avenue, Frost asked himself, and then answered his own question—it was where Jeffrey Gruen had his offices, where the AFC delegation had met him two weeks earlier.
As the taxi turned off the drive at Sixty-first Street, Frost changed his earlier instructions and asked the driver to head down to 324 Park. He realized he was being foolishly impulsive. The person ordering a radio taxi was probably not who he thought it was and, in any event, could be going to see one of dozens of tenants in the Park Avenue office building. And what chance was there that Frost could either spot his quarry or the quarry’s destination?
Spurred by an instinctive feeling of excitement, Frost persisted and let his taxi go when he reached 324. Once he was inside the lobby, a quick inspection heightened his excitement—a gift shop with glass windows faced the lobby directly beside the bank of elevators serving the floors where Gruen had his offices.
Frost ducked into the gift shop, positioning himself by a rack of greeting cards in a way that gave him a clear view of the elevators. A clerk looked at him suspiciously and was justified in doing so, Frost thought; he was sure that in his nervous state he resembled a shoplifter. He made a pretense of looking at the “Happy Birthday/Father” cards in front of him, while in reality watching the elevators.
After five minutes of this, he began to despair. He had been profoundly silly, he concluded. But then his instinct was rewarded—the very person he had wanted to spot appeared for a moment in the lobby and then disappeared in an elevator heading to Gruen’s floors.
Murders & Acquisitions Page 20
